Shame and Guilt and Burdens
by Leveragelover
Summary: Sophie knows she can't help Eliot with his burdens but she can hope that one day he will rid himself of them. NOT S/E!


**So this is my first attempt at writing a (story based around a) conversation between Sophie and Eliot so constructive reviews would be awesome. I don't own Leverage.**

_Shame and Guilt and Burdens_

Sophie was sitting at the bar counter mulling over some tea and a copy of _A Midsummers Night_. Eliot was preparing food for the team in front of her but she really wasn't paying attention. The continuous noise of the knife cutting through food was making her nausea, and banishing any feeling of wanting to eat whatever he was preparing. She stared at the words on the page, eyes unfocusing and letting the words go blurry, and then focusing on a single word. Then the sound of the knife stopped.

"What's wrong Soph? You've been starin' at that page for the last 10 minutes." Eliot demanded quite surly. "And you look like you're about to be sick."

Sophie didn't respond at first, mindlessly mixing nothing with the spoon in her cup of tea. The collection of tea at the bottom spun around and gathered around the spoon as it clanked against the porcelain. She was so entirely out of it. Nate had recently been shot on the job and she was going into a complete shut down mode. "Have you ever killed someone out of self defense, Eliot?"

"Yeah."

"Can you tell me about it?"

"No."

She shut the small leather bound book and put it in her purse next to her. "Why not?"

"Because," he started preparing the chicken, "it's not a nice story."

"And what? You think I can't handle it?" Sophie asked, feeling patronized. She sipped her now cold tea, cringed, and pushed it off to the side.

"It's not that Sophie." He looked up at her with a slightly troubled, distant look on his face. "I just...I don't feel proud of what I did...I'm ashamed-"

"Well of course you don't. I'm not proud of many of the things I've done. I drove a woman insane once. She nearly committed suicide but they put her in a straight jacket and sent her off to an asylum. She ended up cracking her skull on the pavement jumping off the roof in '02." Sophie took a shallow breath and looked at the bar counter, memorizing the grain in the redish hue of the wood.

Eliot watched her silently. He knew her being a grifter meant she did not tend to tell the truth, and also making her a compulsive liar. "It started with a house robbery..." Sophie looked up at him, eyes now attentive. "I was 13. I didn't know how to fight...or anything about self-defense. There were two guys who had broken in while I was home by myself. I tried to fight them off but they were adults and they knew how to fight. The biggest guy ended up shooting me in my shoulder."

Sophie leaned in, now very interested in what happened next.

"I wanted to cower and let them finish me off but I knew I had somethin' to live for so I fought back." Eliots voice had become distant as he mused. He picked up the knife and held it as if he were using it as a weapon. "I tried to fight them off with knives and ended up drivin' them out to my driveway." He put the knife down. "The one tackled me and started to beat me to death. I grabbed the knife, which had been knocked from my hand...and stabbed...and stabbed."

"But you must've known that you were about to kill someone and change your life forever. I mean how could you forgot the fact the court could find you guilty of murder and not just self defense."

"Have you ever been shot?"

She nodded slightly.

"Then you know the pain it causes you. And when you're being beat to death the pain just rips at your very existence. You can't even think about how it's going to change your life or if your going to live...Nothing's coherent. You just want it all to stop."

Eliot always knew how to say the simplest things to make such a huge impact. For a moment everything seemed just so small. "So what happened to the other guy?" She asked quietly.

"He ran off."

Sophie nodded. She knew whatever words - be it a truth or lie - she spoke would make no difference it what Eliot thought or felt about the situation. People had tried to say 'don't feel ashamed' or 'don't blame yourself' but in truth she would always blame herself about something or always feel ashamed about it. The guilt...the burden was something she had to take care of by herself. That's why she decided a few years ago that pushing and pushing Nate was useless. Telling him something he didn't know had no effect. He had to figure things out - relieve himself of that guilt and burden. And that's when she got used to the fact she would have to wait. It wasn't perfect yet but she would wait because she had hope one day it would be.

"I have hope you will one day rid yourself of the shame you have for killing that man in self-defense." With that Sophie grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder and left the bar.

**THE END**


End file.
